by Nathan Halfpenny

Created on: August 06, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

The Designated Hitter, or DH, rule was originally proposed in 1906 by Philadelphia manager Connie Mack but the argument never garnered much support until the late 1960's and early 70's when pitchers such as Bob Gibson and Juan Marichal were dominating hitters. In 1968 Carl Yastrzemski led the AL in hitting with a .301 batting average while Bob Gibson had a 1.12 ERA. Major League Baseball officials determined that something had to be done in order to level the playing field taking away some of the advantages of the pitchers. So, for the start of the 1969 season the pitching mound was lowered from 15 inches to 10 and the strike zone was made smaller, making it much more difficult for pitchers to throw strikes. The DH rule was then implemented after a three year trial run in pre-season games on April 6, 1973, but only in the American League. The National League stayed true to tradition and voted not to adopt the DH rule.

The DH rule has been in place in the American League, AL, since 1973, but is still not observed by the National League, NL. The idea behind the rule is that pitchers, traditionally, are not good hitters due to the fact that they spend the majority of their time in practice working on their pitching mechanics, not in the batting cages. The designated hitter was put in place to increase runs, speed up the game, add more entertainment value for the fans and also to allow pitchers to be able to focus more on their pitching. The problem with the rule is that it is unnatural, it is a modification and not the way the game is intended to be played. Not to mention, it takes much of the strategy out of the equation for managers and teams. Often times during the course of a game, a team will have a rally started only to see their pitcher come to the plate. At this time it is up to the manager to either allow the pitcher to hit and almost certainly lead to an out, or take the pitcher out of the game in favor of a pinch hitter thereby increasing the chances of getting a hit and continuing the rally. With a DH in place in an American League lineup, this decision does not need to be made by the manager, he is allowed to have the best of both worlds. His pitcher is allowed to continue pitching and he has a skilled hitter at the plate to try and get a hit. The DH rule allows AL managers to have their cake and eat it too, while National League skippers are forced to make a decision that could have drastic affects on the ultimate outcome of the game.

The DH rule

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